Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

I've figured out a simple way to make both torpedo weapons and small ships more effective at the same time:

Give torpedos maximum range (20)
Give torpedos heavy damage
Give them a massive to-hit penalty (-90%)
Give larger hulls heavy defensive penalties (the heavier the ship, the greater the Defense Minus)

So torps are much more likely to hit a larger ship than a smaller one. This makes larger hulls extremely vulnerable to long range torpedo volleys, but makes smaller hulls virtually immune to them. You can make smaller torpedo destroyers designed to take out battleships and dreads.

In the mod I'm building I also gave all the torpedos 0 damage until range 6 (the torp has to arm itself). So if a ship is fast enough, it can get in close and take apart a torpedo destroyer without getting damaged.

What do you guys think?

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

Keep in mind with each square distance already adds -10 to hit for the weapon. At 20 range, it will have a combined -290% chance to hit before other modifiers are even considered.

You can also encourage ship balance using QNP and revising mounts so they are not so unequal in their size to damage ratio.

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

You're building another mod? Mind sharing with us what it's all about?

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

I added a special shield mount for small ships. Smaller component for nearly the same amount of shield points. I figure smaller surface area would allow for overlapping shield generators.

Seems to work. Plus with the extra defense bonus for smaller ships, and quicker to build, you can have lots of cheap ships with decent shields use swarm tactics. Like uber-fighters only without that pesky PD weakness.

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

I've been doing some testing. I totally forgot that distance affected the chance to-hit. Looks like Torpedos don't need such a massive to-hit penalty after all. I just need to give greater defensive penalties to the larger hulls.

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

Would the AI understand the zero damage at short range effect? Useing Max range and Largest would be the strategy to use.

Re: Making Torpedos Better and Small Ships Tougher
 

The AI handles blind spots perfectly, even in the middle of a damage range (for direct fire; seekers disappear at the first range where 0 damage is done).